1. Field of the Invention
Various embodiments of the disclosed invention generally relate to systems and methods for identifying suspicious orders for controlled substances, and more specifically, to systems and methods for identifying suspicious orders for controlled substances based on performing checks on a received order using historical information on previous orders.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the United States, distributors of controlled substances are required to be registered by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). A controlled substance is generally understood to be a drug or chemical substance whose possession and use are regulated under the United States' Controlled Substances Act, such as, for instance, many prescription medications and narcotic drugs. Under federal regulations, a distributor must design and operate a system to disclose suspicious orders of controlled substances. Suspicious orders may include orders of unusual size, orders deviating substantially from a normal pattern, and orders of unusual frequency. Failure to do so may result in fines and/or loss of privilege to ship such substances.
Typically, drug distributors institute a simple, threshold-based calculation to determine suspicious orders. For example, a customer may be assigned a monthly threshold for each family of controlled substances and if the customer attempts to place an order that exceeds its monthly threshold, the order is flagged as suspicious.
However, this threshold approach simply sets a number (e.g., threshold) based on various factors and does not automatically adjust over time as more orders are received from customers. Further, this threshold approach does not consider other customers who may be placing orders for controlled substances within the same family. As a result, a customer's threshold may not be as accurate with regard to a “typical” customer who places orders for controlled substances in the same family. In addition, a customer threshold may become outdated (e.g., “stale”) over time and not representative of what should be used to flag suspicious orders. As a consequence, the distributor's system may miss orders that should be flagged as suspicious and this may leave the distributor open to possible fines and/or loss of privilege to distribute such substances. Therefore, a need exists for an improved system and method for identifying suspicious orders for a customer in which the system and method automatically account for historical order information for the customer as well as historical order information for other customers.